Fabulous article! Great comments all around too. I think the multiple blows may be a combination of the two scenarios posited by Chetuo & Lida Rose...

Chetuo: I want to add my idea of what might have happened: Those Towton soldiers were captives of the war and maybe they were some kind of leaders whom the Yorks held responsible for something. After the battle they took them to the area of the grave and took their revenge by brutally beating them in their head. There seems to be some kind of hate in their action...

Lida Rose: Why so many wounds? The author mentions lots of old, healed-over head wounds along with the wounds that caused death that day. Obviously it was not unusual to suffer a serious head wound and survive. Maybe the reason they kept hitting and hitting was because they'd seen many men with bloody head wounds stand up and keep fighting. They weren't taking any chances.

Certainly makes for interesting speculation and could be must see TV too: CSI: Midieval Crime Solvers! Would be a good epidode for Bones too. (US tv show references, possibly not in the UK)

Have to say that uncle clive did a good job of economic forensics too!

A similar sort of examination of the experience of fighting for the common combatant can be found in John Keegan's great work, 'The Face of Battle', which considers the battles of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme.

Why so many wounds? The author mentions lots of old, healed-over head wounds along with the wounds that caused death that day. Obviously it was not unusual to suffer a serious head wound and survive. Maybe the reason they kept hitting and hitting was because they'd seen many men with bloody head wounds stand up and keep fighting. They weren't taking any chances.

"On the run from the battle, with Yorkist soldiers in pursuit (some of them doubtless on horseback), the men would have soon overheated. They may have removed their helmets as a result. Overhauled—perhaps in the vicinity of Towton Hall, which some think may then have been a Lancastrian billet—and disorientated, tired and outnumbered, their enemies would have had time to indulge in revenge."

I want to add my idea of what might have happened: Those Towton soldiers were captives of the war and maybe they were some kind of leaders whom the Yorks held responsible for something. After the battle they took them to the area of the grave and took their revenge by brutally beating them in their head. There seems to be some kind of hate in their action...

Very well researched article with an incredible amount of evidence. It would not have been convincing without the number of subjects examined; I have yet to see an article from the times with similar breadth. Look forward to reading more from the author of the study.

Magnetising. Reminded me of the combat scenes in the Illiad. I once made a toast to an Yorksman: "To the right rose!" He didn't get it at once and I added: "the red rose of York, of course" - not to mention the lady's name. After I have read your story I am thinking of Mars and his two henchmen now: Fear - what we meet before martial action - and Horror - still there almost 550 years later, if you don't believe in PTSD. And that is our human nature wherever.

Some of me family hails from 'arrogate, and this place seems to be just off half way between there and York and a bike ride from each. Brilliant, inspiring, article - excellent combination of forensics and history - puts my old coursebook le Mort d'Arthur into gruesome context - merry christmas and one white rose and one red rose to you all.

But on a point of style/grammar why "different"? Is that as opposed to 13 blows that were identical?

This word "different" is out of control. We read about people who speak six "different" languages or have been to 24 or whatever "different" countries. "Different" is redundant. They cannot be the same languages or countries or in this case blows to the head.

In a nutshell I might have added, England in the C15th had complete market control of a major trading commodity~ wool~ much like Saudi Arabia and oil today. That was the source of our wealth and ease and aristocratic frivolity I suppose. We just played at war. Beats working for a living!

'The average medieval man stood 1.71 metres tall—just four centimetres shorter than a modern Englishman. “It is only in the Victorian era that people started to get very stunted”. Their health was generally good. Dietary isotopes from their knee-bones show that they ate pretty healthily.'

The 1460's was when the wool trade was at its peak...to drag in some boring economic stuff. England and Burgundy (Belgium) colluded to cut out France. A sack of best English wool fetched ten pounds... a sack of Spanish wool two shillings.

There was more cleared land than was needed to feed the population... thanks to the Black death.

There were a hundred saints' days and holy days in addition to Sundays... the four day work week was the norm.

Zero taxation of course: The king lived of his own. The aristocracy played at politics.

The standard of living for ordinary folk was at its peak: in terms of shelter, food and fuel. It was not to be reached again until after the first world war.

One anecdote should suffice...At the monastery of Holy Cross outside Winchester, any tradesman or merchant on his travels could drop in for a free meal...roast lamb without potatoes... There's the downside!... which was presented to the wayfarer on a silver platter... He provided his own knife of course... And afterwards he could walk off with the platter. Saved on the washing up!

That should give some idea of the relative wealth of England in the mid fifteenth century... before the great squeeze set in... when the Hapsburgs got control of Burgundy and Spain and cut England out of the action... and the Reformation eliminated most holidays... and the new gentry landlord class, that supplanted the monasteries and the aristocracy, set about raising the rents. But I digress.

Mutilation and dismemberment are all very fine, but economics can be jolly interesting too.

Why the multiple blows to the head? Maybe because they could? Maybe because it was the way of the world at the time? Maybe because multiple axe blows to the face of your opponent was business as usual? These people did not live in a world in which hate speech could be reported to a discrimination officer. There probably wasn't a man among them who hadn't slaughtered animals at home. And not a one of them ever killed a man by pressing a button.

The truth is, we are the unusual ones. Their methods of killing men were the norm for hundreds of generations.

This one article is almost worth the whole year's subscription. The violence, the research and the manner of the writing, say so much about certain aspects of English culture. Painstaking and detailed, cool and clinical.

Just imagine such a blow landing in your face (even if he was only semi-conscious after the previous ones). Can I have my dinner back please?